It is generally accepted that one of the difficulties associated with monitoring the development of subjects, such as children or groups of children is to ensure that sufficient information is available to make accurate assessments of the progress of such subjects.
At present, the mariner in which this is done varies from making entries in notebooks and physically compiling daily or weekly reports manually which can then be given to parents or other parties of interest to generate periodical progress reports. In the case of children, such as at educational centre, the daily or weekly reports are usually generated manually by a teacher or other staff member. The reports are often prepared outside of the classroom and, in some cases, away from the educational centre. In itself, this is a problem because the accuracy of the reports relies on the recollection of the relevant teacher. Furthermore, the content of the reports can be slanted or biased depending on the mindset of a particular teacher.
The fact that teachers are often forced to prepare the reports outside of school hours can also place an unwelcome burden on those teachers. This can result in the danger of certain teachers being less than diligent in preparing their reports. As a result, the developmental progress of a child or group of children can be adversely affected.
Another problem associated with the system that is presently used is that it is very difficult to detect some sort of pattern of results associated with the reports. It follows that the slant or bias of a particular teacher is often not detected. This can be problematic because teachers at an educational centre are usually from varying training backgrounds and have different attitudes towards behavioural traits displayed by children. Thus, the manner in which a child's development progresses and is reported relies heavily on such an attitude.
Another disadvantage associated with the systems at present is that they do not provide reports which can be assessed in a very short time. In order to assess a child's development, it would be necessary to physically collate a large number of documents, arrange them in time order and attempt to detect some form of pattern resulting from the documents. That may work, to some extent, but it will be appreciated that attempting to do that in the context of a number of other children would be extremely difficult.
Uniformity of language is an important issue when attempting to generate consistent reports for a number of subjects at a particular centre. For example, a statement of a developmental trait can often be associated with a number of different meanings. As a result, one teacher may use a statement which is not necessarily the same statement that would be used by another teacher in attempting to explain the same developmental trait. It is clear that this can result in reports that are excessively subjective. For example, one developmental statement can have a number of different meanings for parents and teachers. As a result, a misunderstanding can easily arise between a parent and teacher regarding the level of development reached by a particular child.
Key to the disadvantages listed above is the fact that proper collection of information and identification and organisation of that information is not presently achieved.